Bringing the crack since December 2003

Two pages from The Titans #3 and a page from Kyle's run

A friend of mine reminded me of quite an adorable scene in the Titans 3, well, not adorable in the most conventional of senses, but looking it up also confirmed for me what I had remembered reading all along! That Donna had, prior to her death, along with forgetting about most of her relationship with Kyle Rayner, forgotten many details about Terry and Robert.

ANYWAY BEING A WOMAN IN COMICS SUCKS.

So this takes place right after Donna got BRYNE'D.

Basically, the 90s: where my pairings go to die. ANYWAY, LOOK AT KYLE'S ADORABLE LITTLE TEAR DROPS ROLLING DOWN HIS CHEEK FOR DONNA AND ROBBIE. So Donna got the call while visiting Kyle's mother with Kyle in California that her family had gone KERSPLAT off a cliff. Donna's life sucks, I know. Anyway, she initially just needs some time away from Kyle, but then the Dark Angel stuff happens. JOHN BRYNE HAPPENS. And her existence gets erased and she gets rebooted by Wally's memories of her and his perception of her.

So then this dude hits on Donna and Jesse when the two girls are at a bar.

AND DONNA IS ALL VERY VERY NOT HAPPY -- she is having issues because of being reimagined to life by Wally. And has been avoiding him like the plague and even stomping off in a fit whenever she sees him at the Titans tower.

Okay the vixen thing was just cute to me because she is such a dork. But! This does throw in very sad and creepy metacommentary about Donna. We see her in this run staring at a picture of her family and crying. In JLA/Titans and in GL 118, she was made very upset by seeing Kyle being so loving to her. Basically, she had bits and pieces of memories, and knew logically who these people were to her, but she had no context to any of it. She only had the memories of the Titans, mostly. She didn't even remember her favourite photographer. To not remember any intimate moments you have had, even with your ex-husband, to not remember moments with your son or your (now ex) boyfriend, to have bits and pieces of your identity taken away and be reimagined by a guy who crushed on you your entire life is kind of a freaky experience to think about. Wally meant absolutely the best with his intentions, he wanted to bring his friend back. But what she went through is kind of freaky metacommentary in my mind of writers just tossing on to women in comics, and Donna in particular!!! These traits and reimagining her to whoever they want her to be, with little to no regards of her continuity. L O L I AM SURE IT WAS ALL UNINTENTIONAL but it is still hilarious nonetheless.

Maybe we need to come up with a new trope for it. Post-Reboot Stress Syndrome?

Hmm. Marcus and Chaos....Both overly muscled, mostly naked, with creepy greasy curly 'dos and bad facial hair, and mondo mother fixations. Have we ever seen them together in the same place at the same time?

It just seems like every time they used to want to kill someone or have some other wacky horrid idea like this one, they'd spin a wheel, but all the pictures on the wheel would be of Donna (well, maybe one or two of Kory). The things they did to her was/is insane.

I don't really think Byrne meant it to go this way. Originally, the idea was that Donna's timeline would just be restored--by the Lasso of Truth & some divine power from the Goddess of Truth--with the Wally from her timeline as a sort of anchor, maybe? Then Devin Grayson saw it as a hook for the character.

I kind of loathe Bryne for giving her a new origin that was based completely on TRAGIC PAST LIVES and retconned all past connections and also made her a MAGICAL CLONE and just... being terrible about that, and I am sad it led to the end of my ~OTP~, but you are right in that I don't think it was his intention for Wally to make it that Donna wasn't restored "fully" with any private or personal memories. Devin Grayson definitely jumped on that herself.

I always remember thinking, in my own personal fan-wank being all "omg what if Wally purposefully didn't give her, her memories of all her relationships and stuff because HE STILL LOVES HER D:" I know that obviously wasn't what happened. But still it always kind of... made me wonder about them getting Wally to do it. I get it was probably a convenience thing... But I don't know. Just something I thought.

Unfortunately, the way Byrne wrote it, he left himself with about three people who could even remember Donna from before. Wally being the only one not in her immediate family. And really, Wally & Diana were both involved in resetting her as part of the timeline. And really, it was just a goofy throwaway scene in a story not meant to be taken so seriously. And this whole thing is moot now wince multiple retcons have voided that particular Donna situation.

And really, it was just a goofy throwaway scene in a story not meant to be taken so seriously.

Totally agreed, and as you mentioned before, I don't think it was meant to be so permanent or meant to screw Donna over so royally. It was what other writers chose to work with and interpret it (Well, mostly Devin Grayson) that made her not get restored/still not know who she was/forget all of these intimate moments and details of her life. Before as you said it was more of a "magical " element where Wally was an anchor in bringing her back, but it was never explicitly mentioned by Bryne or in that arc that she only had Wally's memories of her own identity, period. It should have just restored her and that was that, and while Bryne can be blamed for a lot of things, he can't be blamed for her actual forgetting of everything around her. Basically it was just writers and editorial doing quite a team job in mucking her up.

And this whole thing is moot now wince multiple retcons have voided that particular Donna situation.

Not so much. New Wonder Woman Encylopedia still has the dark angel stuff in tact and the multiple lives/memory wipe stuff, just a totally different motivation now. Since Hippolyta was no longer the WWII Wonder Woman, Dark Angel is no longer her enemy and so her motivation for doing that to Donna wasn't to get at her "mother", but because she's an AU donna that is desperate to be the only Donna (because she believes only one of them can truly exist). You are right in the sense that a lot of people seemed to have just forgotten about it when writing her though and just go with the kid sister angle.

As much as I hate what they did to her, I can .. kind of understand why Grayson (and Faerber too? wasn't v2 co-written? I don't remeber...) decided to use this 'recostructed using Wally's memory of her = massive identity crisis' as a subplot for Donna in Titans.She has been rebooted, and her previous connections outside of the Titans were completely destroyed as she could no longer be a mother, an ex-wife and the girlfriend of her latest mate.Practically, she has been left with a very few story to be told about her because has been put in a place where the significant things out of her superhero life has been eradicated abruptly from her existence, and irreversibly.Wich kind of goes back to your point: it is not intentional for sure, but a creepy/interesting metacommentary of what has been done to her character outside of the story.

The sad thing is that she is supposed to be restored completely in Titans 25 but still NONE GIVES A SHIT about writing her coherently with her past...!

Yeah, Faerber especially stepped in later in the series I think, during most of the major Donna subplot fallthrough. Like you said, it was supposed to all be solved in Issue 25! But...lol, yeah.

Also levy babe I'm going to admit right here, it's strange that now that Dark Angel has a different continuity (earth seven donna) I actually find her hot and think she could be interesting if she wasn't so cheesy. I FEEL LIKE... I'M BETRAYING A BIG PART OF MYSELF BY ADMITTING THIS...CAUSE SHES SO LIKE...WELL HER NAME IS "DARK ANGEL" THATS HOW LAME SHE IS

LOL, nice theory.... but I don't think it's meant to be so. Wally had a crush on Donna as a kid but it died pretty early. If I have to say one girl he struggle a lot to get over and is not completely gone from his heart not even now that he had the love of his life by his side, then it's Raven.

The funny thing is that after that, as a close friend of both, it is regularly Wally that make hints at Kyle and Donna and how things are going between them after their breakup. The irony of this always get me. X°D

Totally agreed on both counts. Wally and Donna is that thing to me that could have worked out if she ever were interested in him that way, since I think they'd be compatible, but Wally's crush on Donna never got past the crush stage. With Raven he actually loved her, and of course therewere problems in how that arose too, but I think it's been strange for him ever since. I wish they hadn't de-aged her, your icon reminded me of possibly one of the only scenes i liked in the new Titans series 8|

My guts keep telling me that Wally and Linda are something holy and untouchable to me, yet, I can't deny Raven is a big thing in Wally's life and I can see how they'd keep affecting each other and it's .. just right that it would be so, forever and ever. Even though Wally and Raven are compeletly incompatible and would have ended up killing each other metaphorically or not if they'd ever got together LOLOLOL..

And yeah, that was one of the few salvageable parts of Titans v.4.I also liked the bits of CompetentTeamLeaderCompleteBastardToWomen!Dick and Raven yelling at Gar and how he was so dumb at her issues, but for the rest it was honestly pretty awfull..:/

The more I dwell on it, the more Donna's angst that she might be a literal, real-life Mary Sue creeps me out.

I know the other girls are trying to be reassuring, and it's all very sweet, but I can't imagine their input would be much comfort. So she's the super-nice big sister that puts everyone at ease? That's great, but those types of people DO tend to have very compartmentalised lives. They do have aspects of themselves that they keep secret for the most part. Everyone does.

I don't blame her for worrying that she's been watered down or neutered. This might be meta-commentary on women in comics, but it could easily double as meta-commentary on the way some men view women irl. The idea of being brought back as the living incarnation of the fantasies that dudes have projected onto me over the years fills me with creeping existential dread. Can you say "Manic Pixie Dream Girl"? *shudder*

Well hopefully the Wally stuff has been superseded by Infinite Crisis? That stated that every version of Donna merged into her one self, so presumably any traits Wally's imagination left out were reconstituted at that point.

Yeah, but that leaves and even bigger and more confusing problem of how many memories does she have? Does she recall every shitty life that Dark Angel put her through and which all ended tragically? Does she remember all the ghastly Nazi shit that Dark Angel herself did (Dark Angel wasn't a person in her own right up until the reveal that she was another Donna, DA was only a demonic entity possessing the Golden Age Paula Von Gunther)

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